USSR (All) – findings

The Union of Soviet Socialist Republics is a now-defunct group of states that existed from 1922 to 1991 on the territory of the former Russian Empire. It was a totalitarian state run by the Communist Party. It had a socialist system enshrined in its constitution.

The economy of the USSR was centrally controlled and the state was characterised, particularly in the first decades of its existence, by extreme repression of many of the human rights of its inhabitants. Probably the most horrific oppression was experienced by the peoples living in the Soviet Union under the rule of J.V. Stalin in the years before and after World War II.

The Soviet Union also used a number of its satellite states, including Czechoslovakia, to implement its policies. In the second half of the 1980s, Mikhail Gorbachev became the last leader of the USSR. His policy of seeking a more human face led to the rapid disintegration of the Eastern bloc and also the collapse of the USSR.